Weird Dreams
by Lurkz
Summary: Bud has a weird dream and tries to explain it to Mac and Harm. Based on some bizarre dreams I've had myself. Kinda stupid but meh, I felt like writing it. One shot.


_Disclaimer: No one from JAG belongs to me as much as I might wish it were so. They all belong to Donald Bellisario and CBS and such._

_ So I don't really know where this story came from. It popped in my head this morning after I woke up. I blame it completely on school. The sad part? I've actually had dreams like this. I tend to get similar reactions when I try to explain them also, something about most of my friends being non-computer majors. :-P So this is just a random one shot fic, not even really sure when it would be set except after Bud's DOD case. So read and hopefully enjoy.

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Harm meandered his way into the break room, flashing a brief grin at Mac and Bud who were already there. Stepping up to the coffee machine he looked at Bud again, a concerned frown creasing his forehead, "Bud, did you sleep at all last night? Bud?"

With a jerk Bud looked up, blinking a couple times as he tried to focus. "I'm sorry, what'd you say, sir?"

Harm turned and leaned against the counter, coffee mug now full. He shot a brief glance at Mac then looked back at the younger man, "I asked if you'd slept at all last night."

"Oh… not really."

"Kids keeping you awake, Bud?" Mac asked with a slight smile of amusement. Bud hadn't been this out of it since his case against Singer when AJ had the flu. Fortunately he didn't have any big cases at the moment, no one wanted to relive the DOD case.

"No, actually, just weird dreams."

"Weird dreams? What kind of weird dreams?" Harm asked curiously, making the bad assumption that they were just normal dreams involving showing up to work naked or something along those lines.

Bud looked at him then over at Mac who was also listening interestedly, finding this to be much more fascinating than the mountain of paperwork on her desk. Bud shrugged, "You really want to know?"

"Sure, Bud, maybe we can figure out what's causing them," Mac said with a smile.

"Ok," Bud paused, gathering his thoughts. "Well first I dreamed that I had to get this server working so that Coates could use it for something or other. Only Tomcat wouldn't install and..."

"Tomcat?" Harm interjected, confused as to how his beloved planes fit into this.

"Yes, sir. Tomcat Apache Server, it's a program you install to run servlets on a server," Bud replied, not really paying attention. Harm blinked, exchanging a confused look with Mac. Neither had any clue what Bud had just said beyond the words "program" and "install."

"So anyways, I couldn't get Tomcat to install, but I needed to have iy installed by a deadline or the computer would explode taking all of JAG with it. Only, after installing Tomcat I had to get the SQL databases working properly and write an aspx page to access them all with a gui." Mac and Harm just stared, having no idea what he was talking about and yet somehow morbidly curious to hear the rest.

"And then I was suddenly in the middle of a video game with a digital console in front of me. I had to program the game patches so it wouldn't destroy me but every time I got something fixed something else broke. And then I was suddenly programming OpenGL and causing various aspects of the city to change. It was kinda like the Matrix only I was actually typing code to change things. Then I was on the Enterprise and had to fix the machine only none of the programming languages I knew worked. I had to learn a completely new one only the book was in Klingon and I couldn't read it."

He paused for a breath but launched into further description before Mac or Harm could stop him, leaving the two officers staring at each other helplessly. "So I asked the engineer to help me, only it was Tiner and he didn't know how to read it either. So we had to rely solely on the diagrams which weren't really useful and neither were the algorithm examples because we couldn't read the descriptions. And then the ship was under attack. So I ran to see who it was and we were being besieged by Turing Machines. Only it was a variety, some were multi-tape and some were just multi-track. And the mothership was a universal Turing Machine. The multi-tape ones were firing torpedoes at us, only the torpedoes were made up of Languages. The multi-track machines were firing lasers made up of Grammars. And then the mothership fired its ultimate weapon which turned out to be recursively enumerable and NP hard problems. And we had to try and solve them or they would kill us. But we couldn't solve any of them because they weren't decidable and so the Enterprise tried to flee while the Turing Machines chased us. And just as the ship was about to explode I woke up."

He looked expectantly at his friends only to be rewarded with blank stares. "Ma'am? Sir?" Receiving no answer he tried again, "Ma'am? Sir?" he asked waving a hand in front of their faces. Mac blinked shaking off the reveries and glancing at Harm who still seemed completely dazed.

She reached over and tapped his shoulder causing him to jump slightly, shaking his head. He focused on Mac then back at Bud, "Uh, what?"

Bud looked at them, puzzled, "Are you alright?"

"Ummm… yes, Commander. You're right, strange dream, dunno what could be causing it. If you'll excuse me I have to… do… stuff." With that vague description Harm beat a hasty exit, heading as rapidly as he could to his office without looking like he was fleeing.

Bud looked at Mac, his expression reflecting his confusion, "Was it something I said, ma'am?"

"Er… I think Harm's just a little stressed. But I too have to get working. Sorry about your strange dreams, Bud, hopefully they'll go away soon." While speaking she'd been edging towards the door. As soon as she'd finished Mac too turned and fled to her own office.

Bud stood in the middle of the break room, completely confused. "What'd I say?" he asked the air, earning him an odd look from a passing seaman. Sighing he glanced around, noticing that Harm had left his coffee mug. Picking it up he started for Harm's office, knocking on the door.

"Enter," Harm called without looking up. He was doing his best to bury himself in paperwork.

"Uh sir, you left this in the break room."

Harm's head shot up and he all but bolted to his feet. "Uh, thank you, Bud. If you'll excuse me I just remembered something I need to discuss with Colonel MacKenzie." For the second time in less than five minutes Harm fled.

Bud frowned after him. Jen had witnessed the bizarre encounter in Harm's office and walked up, "What's going on?"

"I don't know. The Commander and Colonel are acting odd suddenly."

"Weird, do you know any reason they might be acting that way?"

Bud shrugged, "I dunno, all I did was tell them about a weird dream I had last night. Maybe they're just stressed from work."

Jen nodded, "I'll bet that's it, sir." Bud smiled at her and walked off; content that he'd figured out what was bothering his friends. Idly he thought back to his dream, chuckling at the thought of the attacking Turing Machines.


End file.
